Jared Diamonds Book Collapse Analysis

In Jared Diamonds book Collapse, he talks about different issues that can hurt the environment. These issues varied from environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and friendly trade partners, but most importantly is how society responds to the problem. Today a major problem that our society is facing is Electronic Waste. With technology becoming more advanced each year the demand for new products is increasing. Though this might seem good for the people, it actually is hurting are society. With this becoming a rising issue it brings up the question, is electronic waste causing pollution and causing health issues? To answer this question first we have to know what electronic waste is. Over the years the American way of life
Electronic waste is now being connected to inflammation and oxidative stress precursors to cardiovascular disease, DNA damage and possibly cancer. With 20-50 million tons of E-waste being generated each year there is no question that it could start causing problems. During E-waste recycling process many pollutants including persistent organic pollutant and heavy metals are released. When this happens there is a chance of it being inhaled by contamination in the air. As scary as it sounds it is true and researchers have built up data to prove their findings. The following is from a test made by Dr Fangxing Yang, of Zhejiang University and others “After exposing the cultured lung cells to the organic-soluble and water-soluble constituents of the samples, the researchers tested for the level of Interleukin-8, a key mediator of inflammatory response, and Reactive Oxygen Species, chemically reactive molecules that can cause extensive damage in excess. The samples were also tested for the expression of the p53 gene – a tumor suppressor gene that produces a protein to help counteract cell damage. If there is evidence of this gene being expressed it can be seen as a marker that cell damage is taking place.” From this test the results showed increases in both of the levels. That means from breathing in contaminated
In this survey I asked a few basic questions on the matter of E-waste. Some of the questions that I asked were what doing you do with your old electronics. Do you what happens to your old electronic products. And finally I asked if they knew what E-waste was. The majority of people answered that for their old products they would give them to a friend, sell online, or throw away in the trash. For the following questions none of the people I surveyed knew what actually happened to their products but they could make the guess that E-waste was the discarding of old products, though they did not think it was harmful. After telling them some of the problems with throwing away their old devices they thought more on the subject then they did before. With getting a few more people to know about this subject hopefully they can tell more people about the problem at hand. Since none of the people I surveyed knew about this problem it is obvious that we need to get more people to know about it since we all use electronics. To help solve the problem on electronic waste we need to start taking